Bing Maps gets Nokia Brand and Possibly the Boot

January 19, 2012 3 Comments

The Microsoft/Nokia relationship gets a little confusing these days.  According to Pocket-Lint:

Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, has told Pocket-lint that we shall soon be seeing the Nokia brand name within other devices and not just the company’s own phones.

“You’ll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map that you get from Microsoft properties over a period of time,” Elop explained to Pocket-lint in an interview behind closed doors at CES in Las Vegas. “Even if you are on a BlackBerry device, who recently said they were going to start using Bing Maps.”

 Interesting isn’t it?  Nokia Maps on other devices.  Here is the kicker…
“Part of the relationship we established with Microsoft is that we are clearly placing a bet on the Windows Phone platform. [In return] they are placing a bet on our location-based platform: mapping, navigation and so forth,” said Elop.
Thus it appears, at least in Nokia’s mind, that Bing Maps might eventually be replaced with Nokia Maps.  Clearly Nokia believes that they bring navigation and location to the partnership.  I’m sure though, as with everything Microsoft related, this is going to be much more complicated than it should be.  In a perfect world, Microsoft and Nokia would agree that Bing Maps should be replaced by Nokia Maps and get it done quickly and with minimal fuss.  The reality is that there will probably be three mapping platforms.  The old Bing Maps, the old Nokia Maps and this new hybrid Nokia Maps (powered by Bing?) that blends the two services.
Ugh, right?  Check with Pocket-link tomorrow to see the full interview with Elop and hopefully more detail into what this means.  Almost a year ago I talked a little bit about this scenario, maybe it is finally time.

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Bing Maps to be Powered by Nokia – Huh?

May 16, 2011 Leave a Comment

Update: A birdie told me that there is nothing new here that we didn’t know about before.  Move along…

Anytime a blogger uses the word vague “above the fold” on their blog, you pretty much can be assured they don’t know anything about anything[ref]I’m thinking of watermarking my blog with “vague”[/ref].  Greg Sterling sat down with someone close to Nokia and says:

However my lunch companion argued unequivocally that Nokia Maps would effectively replace almost everything that Microsoft had developed over the past several years in terms of the Bing Maps infrastructure. This was shocking because Microsoft has invested hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions) in creating a viable competitor to Google Maps. Most recently the company has been promoting its roll out of new hi-resolution aerial imagery on a global basis.

So what does this mean?  Well first Microsoft already uses Nokia/Navteq for most of their mapping, no big change there.  Microsoft has already what might be the best aerial photography in the business, so why would you replace something that is awesome with something that isn’t?  What about their API?  Could be, I’ve never been a fan of the Bing Maps APIs, so maybe this is Microsoft taking their aerials and Bird’s Eye to the Nokia Maps API and branding it as Bing Maps.  That would be a good mix because Nokia Maps is actually a good API, just one that doesn’t get used by anyone.  Problem solved!

But wait right?!?!?!  Nokia Maps?  Wasn’t that called Ovi?  Not anymore, the marketing team at Nokia has gotten their sanity back and killed the Ovi[ref]What does Ovi mean in Finnish? So Ovi means door in Finnish.  Replace door with Windows, awesome marketing guys![/ref] name.  This means that Nokia has decided their name actually has value and they’ll use it in their products.  Now if Microsoft would just realize that Bing means zip and brand their stuff as Microsoft, everything will be back to normal.  Or better  yet, they could just rename the product “Not Google Maps” which is really how most people know it anyway.

Bottom line is that Microsoft loves drama, feeds on drama and wouldn’t know what to do unless there was drama.  Thus Bing Maps powered by Nokia is just something to get us through the next 3 months until the marketing dorks in Redmond get crazy again and start thinking of new ideas to waste time and money on.

Cartoon by: Hugh MacLeod

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If Microsoft Bought Nokia, What Would That Mean For NAVTEQ?

December 31, 2010 3 Comments

So there is some of that goofy year end speculation that always happens this time of the year, but it got me thinking.  What would happen to NAVTEQ if Microsoft did buy Nokia?

With location and mapping so important in 2011, wouldn’t Microsoft love to have NAVTEQ in their back pocket? And with NAVTEQ being a well placed government contractor, it would only enhance Microsoft’s battle against Google (and to a lesser extent in our space, Esri).

Bing Maps already uses NAVTEQ, Microsoft isn’t abandoning NAVTEQ even though it is a huge OSM supporter and Google already has their own map data. Seems like a good fit to me.

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Ovi Maps? Is anyone actually implementing this thing?

September 15, 2010 9 Comments

So a week doesn’t go by where I don’t see some news about Ovi Maps.

The new, improved Ovi Maps will offer, live traffic flow information, a new drive assist mode, public transportation maps, a redesigned places page, and social check-ins. The public transportation maps will be available via a map layer for over 80 cities around the world and check-ins will allow you to broadcast your location via SMS or to your social network of choice.

OK, so does anyone actually use Ovi Maps on purpose?  I mean MapQuest learned how to fit in with the new world order, but Nokia seems to still think we are all ready to jump on their platform.  Part of why Where 2.0 doesn’t interest me anymore is they keep getting up there pushing this platform like it is viable or something.  But hey I doesn’t matter right?  Name one product of value that ever launched at Where 2.0?  [editor's note: I must remind Mr. Fee that his passion launched at Where 2.0]

I wonder where Ovi Maps is?  At least Nokia is consuming their own dogfood.

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MapQuest goes OpenStreetMap – At Least in UK

July 9, 2010 5 Comments

MapQuest, in that ever battle to stay relevant, has chosen to move toward OpenStreetMap.  Says the Wall Street Journal:

The company [MapQuest], a subsidiary of AOL, plans to announce Friday morning that it is launching a site in the U.K. based on a project called OpenStreetMap, which is dedicated to user-created mapping. The OpenStreetMap project has caught on most quickly in Europe, which is why MapQuest is starting there, but AOL also will devote $1 million to support the growth of open-source mapping in the U.S. The site has a U.K. address — http://open.mapquest.co.uk — but users can navigate to user-created maps from any country.

While we’ve all worked really hard here in the good old USA to improve the maps, clearly there is still a ton of work to get done (especially with building the networks), but $1,000,000 (doesn’t it look bigger when you use those zeros?) should help get this moving.  CloudMade tried to fund this through their Ambassador program, but pulled the plug when progress was slow in coming.  AOL is clearly committed to the program and probably happy to spend their dollars on funding OSM than shipping them off to Navteq (er Nokia) and their competition.  How long before Microsoft decides that they are done funding Nokia’s Ovi Maps effort through licensing and joins OSM or moves to Tele Atlas?

Now if AOL gave me that million dollars and asked me to figure out how to build out the USA, I’d go ahead and hire the top 10 German OSM contributes and set them loose on America.  It would be done in two weeks.  Seriously though, the USA map needs a ton of work and the quality of the map compared to Europe is probably the only thing holding back OSM.

MapQuest has more details on their blog.

Here comes AOL!

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Navteq out, TeleAtlas in

September 19, 2008 17 Comments

So Google has finally gotten around to making sure both the Google Maps API and the Google Local Search API are using the same underlying data.

Google Maps has now switched their map data provision completely over to TeleAtlas from Navteq. Now the google Maps, the Google API and the Google Maps for Mobile all use the same underlying data. This switch was only a matter of time given Nokia aquisition of Navteq

I’m curious to see if the change will affect any mapping applications out there that were using the Navteq data given that TeleAtlas and Nokia Navteq are probably different.  Time for Peter Batty to revisit his Google Maps vs Google Local Search blog posts.

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